A browser is often used to receive, process, and display electronic media content made available through a computer network or from the memory of a local computer. The browser may include functionality for processing and displaying some types of media content to the user, but may need to call upon and export data to external media players when other types of media content need to be processed and displayed to the user. The browser may access a registry of alternate media players available for processing particular types of media content, and certain alternate media players may be designated as default players for certain media types. If multiple instances of a single browser or several different browsers are loaded, however, the media players specified by the registry are applied to each of the browser loads.